M. Bianet Castellanos

Indigenous Dispossession

Housing and Maya Indebtedness in Mexico

• Broschiertes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

"Following the recent global housing boom, tract housing development became a billion-dollar industry in Mexico. And at the national level, neoliberal housing policy has overtaken debates around land reform. For Indigenous peoples, access to affordable housing remains crucial to alleviating poverty. But as palapas, traditional thatch and wood houses, are replaced by tract houses in the Yucatâan Peninsula, Indigenous peoples' relationship to land, urbanism, and finance is similarly transformed, revealing a legacy of debt and dispossession. "Indigenous Dispossession" examines how Maya families grapple with the ramifications of neoliberal housing policies. M. Bianet Castellanos relates Maya migrants' experiences with housing and mortgage finance in Cancâun, one of Mexico's fastest growing cities. Their struggle to own homes reveals colonial and settler colonial structures that underpin the city's economy, built environment, and racial order. But even as Maya people contend with predatory lending practices and foreclosure, they cultivate strategies of resistance-from "waiting out" the state, to demanding Indigenous rights in urban centers. As Castellanos argues, it is through these maneuvers that Maya migrants forge a new vision of Indigenous urbanism"--

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Stanford University Press
• Seitenzahl: 192
• Erscheinungstermin: 15. Dezember 2020
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 152mm x 228mm x 21mm
• Gewicht: 302g
• ISBN-13: 9781503614345
• ISBN-10: 1503614344
• Artikelnr.: 59082393

Autorenporträt

M. Bianet Castellanos is Associate Professor of American Studies at the University of Minnesota. She is the author of A Return to Servitude: Maya Migration and the Tourist Trade in Cancún (2010).

Inhaltsangabe

Contents and Abstracts
Introduction: Indigenous Cancún
chapter abstract
The central argument of this book is that as Indigenous migrants move to
cities, they are no longer treated as Indigenous and instead become
deracialized subjects who are disciplined through neoliberal instruments of
debt, like mortgage finance and credit cards, leading to greater economic
precarity and a loss of autonomy from the state. Through an ethnography of
Maya migrants living in Cancún, one of Mexico's fastest growing cities, I
show that Maya migrants' struggles to own a home reveal the colonial and
settler colonial structures underpinning the city's economy, built
environment, and racial order. As they grapple with predatory lending and
foreclosure, Maya families cultivate strategies of resistance, from
"waiting out" the state to demanding recognition as Indigenous peoples in
urban centers. Through these maneuvers, Maya migrants forge a new vision of
Indigenous urbanism that counters a discourse of urban malaise and
articulates dignity with democracy.
1Before Housing Reform: The Gendering of Urban Property
chapter abstract
Chapter one maps out the history of land policies in Cancún and how they
have been shaped by ideologies of family, gender, and citizenship. By
excluding migrants who were unmarried and childless from affordable housing
and land programs, the state defined citizenship narrowly and encouraged
migrants to embrace the nuclear family if they wished to become citizens of
this new urban space. In response, Maya women mobilized their status as
wives and mothers to lobby for land.
2Promoting Housing Reform: Debt as Patrimony
chapter abstract
Chapter two examines the transformation of Mexico's land distribution
policies and property rights through a discursive analysis of the
ideologies central to government campaigns promoting "dignified" housing.
Analyzing news articles, government campaign documents, and one Maya
family's response to these campaigns, I examine the narrative devices and
rhetorical strategies used to make housing attractive and to align debt
with national ideals. The language of patrimony and suburban domesticity is
intended to soften the retreat of the state from land redistribution, and
makes palatable and desirable the process of going into debt on a much
larger scale than previously possible.
3After Housing Reform: Credit as the New Frontier
chapter abstract
Chapter three analyzes Indigenous migrants' willingness to take on debt.
Prior to 2000, Maya aspired to own, but without debt. Homeownership has
increased Maya migrants access to credit, making them the "new frontier" of
capitalism. But it has concomitantly increased their economic risk. It
considers how credit and risk take on a gendered and "moral valence." For
male migrants, going into debt to purchase a home is a risky venture that
ignores lessons learned from Indigenous experiences with debt servitude.
Yet for female migrants, owning a concrete block home has become a sign of
progress and security from natural disasters. To tease out this moral,
cultural, and gendered dilemma, I examine migrants' experiences with
microfinance and credit cards.
4Foreclosure: Waiting Out the State
chapter abstract
Chapter four centers on one Maya family's experience with foreclosure. How
do Indigenous peoples cope with this loss and how does it (re)structure
their attachments to place, land and nation? Even as housing reform becomes
a form of discipline to produce new types of citizens and construct new
narratives of progress, debt delinquency, and insecurity, I show how
migrants' resistance strategies, from foot dragging to legal suits to
postponing foreclosure, are transformed into a process of "waiting out" the
state and capital. In so doing, Maya migrants sidestep the bureaucratic
measures created to regulate the poor and convert consent into provocative
acts of obstruction and defiance.
5Eviction: Invoking Indigenous Resistance
chapter abstract
Chapter five examines the case of Maya migrants who reject social housing
and instead opt to live in the squatter settlement of Colonia Mario
Villanueva. Social housing, Maya migrants argue, entails great risk (due to
mortgage debt) and is rife with social atomization. In contrast, life in
Colonia Mario Villanueva is organized around the principles of Indigenous
communal land practices. It is centered around the colonia's legal battle
to avoid eviction, which was led by Maya women. These women relied on
strategies of resistance derived from Indigenous land struggles. Colonias
are perfect places to cultivate political subordination, but in the case of
Mario Villanueva, they also become spaces of insubordination.
Epilogue: A Cautionary Tale of Indebtedness
chapter abstract
The book concludes by assessing how Indigenous migrants have fared under
housing reform. Galvanized by the parallels between their ancestors'
struggle with esclavitud and their own land and housing struggles, Maya
migrants demand to be engaged as Indigenous and accorded the rights to land
and self-determination. Migrants urge us to engage with a more expansive
conception of territoriality, one that is not limited to the land
boundaries of rural communities but is broad enough to recognize the
peninsula's sacred Maya geography and to encompass Indigenous diasporas in
urban centers. Through this articulation, they offer a more dynamic
interpretation of Indigenous rights that aims to combat settler tactics of
elimination through assimilation and dispossession. In so doing, Maya
migrants are forging a new vision of Indigenous urbanism that moves beyond
a colonial politics of recognition.